Educating Guardians

In book 2 of Plato when they are talking about educating the children to be guardians, they talk about how they think they should modify some of the stories about the Gods. As much as this angered me at first while reading it, it no longer angers me because I feel like I’m starting to understand. They feel as if the Gods are good and therefore the stories that contradict that God may be good are false and poorly written. They think because they are false and poorly written then they must modify them for the children who are learning to be guardians because these are the examples that are set for the children and they want them to be morally sound and aware. I think that the stories that homer and other famous intellectuals wrote at that time were really common and even though they were common that doesn’t mean that the people believed they were true. At first I thought that they were just telling their children untrue stories about the Gods they believed in but in actuality I think they didn’t fully believe those stories and they were in fact being true with their children. I can’t help but let this intertwine with my beliefs in that I believe my God is all mighty and all good. One day when I have a family and I raise my children in a Christian home, I think it will be vital to their beliefs to educate them on all the love and goodness that God provides. I would want to shape my children into beautiful and amazing Christian people and I would want to provide them with as much information that I could that would set the perfect example of this. Of course I’m going to teach my children to rely and depend on God for examples and for a way of living because there is no other image of perfect and there is no other image of love that is greater. I wouldn’t want them to think they have to be exactly like God because no one will ever be as perfect but I would want them to want to be more like God in that he is all loving and of good doing. I would never tell them of stories that were untrue of God doing evil acts because I don’t believe that God is capable of being evil. If I’m following the story correctly, which I very well might be lost, but if I am then I completely agree with and understand why they wanted the guardians of their state to be educated morally and in wholly goodness.